For Monty McGovern, professor of mathematics, putting in effort wasn’t enough. “I was always committed to teaching and I tried different approaches, but students never seemed to respond,” says McGovern. “Everything I tried seemed to backfire.” It got so bad that McGovern “felt a sense of dread each year when the envelopes with the student ratings arrived.”

	Monty McGovern

Still, it took years for McGovern to seek help with his teaching. He says his delay is probably due, in part, to his chosen discipline—mathematics. “There is a strong tradition in math that people tend to be fiercely independent,” he explains. “We feel like we should be able to work out our problems ourselves.”

McGovern finally sought help when he faced a review for promotion. CIDR staff member Karen Freisen videotaped one of McGovern’s classes and spoke with students about their experience in the course.

“You get comments on the written evaluations every quarter, but those tend to be completely unfocused,” says McGovern. “Students were not articulate about their frustrations. With Karen serving as a facilitator, the information was much more useful.”

McGovern also attended a workshop offered by the UW’s Institute for Teaching Excellence, at which faculty discussed teaching projects they wanted to pursue. “I got some specific ideas there,” he says. “One simple one was to have students write down why they are taking the course on the first day. That information now influences my choice of material. If I know students have an interest in a certain field, I can choose examples relating to that field,” he says.

McGovern also is more attuned to the cues students give during class and teaches the material from their point of view. “Before, I focused too much on content—on what I was going to say. Now I try to split it 50/50 between content and audience. I try to adapt the content to the audience.”

All of these changes led the Department of Mathematics to ask McGovern to serve on a recently formed committee on teaching quality. McGovern was more than willing. “In the past, there has been a perceived indifference to teaching in this department,” McGovern admits. “We’ve really been trying to change that. I’ve definitely seen a change in the last few years.”

Next Section: Merrill Hille: A Natural Evolution

[Winter/Spring 2001 - Table of Contents]